Ann M. Martin

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Ann M. Martin grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, the daughter of Eden Martin, a preschool teacher, and Henry Martin, a cartoonist for The New Yorker. Her mother's ancestry traces back to Mayflower pilgrims. She has a younger sister, Jane. Martin developed an early interest in writing, dictating stories to her mother before she could write. Her favorite authors included Lewis Carroll, P. L. Travers, Hugh Lofting, Astrid Lindgren, and Roald Dahl. She discovered her passion for writing in second grade and her fourth-grade teacher noted she would make a wonderful writer. In high school, her favorite subjects were English and French; her least favorite was math. As a teen, she worked at the Eden Institute, a school for autistic children, and decided to become a teacher. She graduated from Princeton High School in 1973 and attended Smith College from 1973 to 1977, studying early-childhood education and child psychology. Her senior thesis was on children's literature in the classroom. She lived in Gardiner House and wrote for the Smith College newspaper, The Sophian. She described Smith as 'an environment of strong, independent women,' which influenced her feminist identity and her portrayal of female characters.

Reader's Guide

After graduating from Smith College, Martin taught a split fourth- and fifth-grade classroom at Plumfield School in Noroton, Connecticut, working with students aged 8–13 who had learning disabilities including dyslexia and autism. She has said this work influenced her writing. After a year of teaching, she pursued publishing, working her way up from editorial assistant to senior editor at children's book publishers including Pocket Books and Scholastic. She is now a full-time writer. Her first book, Bummer Summer, was published in 1983 and won the Children's Choice Award in 1985. She began writing The Baby-Sitters Club series in 1985 while working as a children's book editor at Scholastic. After writing the first 35 novels, Scholastic hired ghostwriters to continue the series. In 2010, she published a prequel, The Summer Before. She now concentrates on single novels, many set in the 1960s. A Corner of the Universe won a Newbery Honor in 2003. In 2015, she won the Josette Frank Award for Rain Reign. In 1990, she co-founded The Lisa Libraries and founded the Ann M. Martin Foundation. She served as a producer for the 2020 Netflix adaptation of The Baby-Sitters Club.

Did You Know?

• Martin's mother's ancestry traces back to pilgrims who traveled on the Mayflower in 1620.
• Before she could write, Martin would dictate stories to her mother to write down for her.
• Her fourth-grade teacher wrote on her student folder that she would make a wonderful writer.
• Martin worked at the Eden Institute, a school for autistic children, as a teen.
• She wrote the first 35 novels in The Baby-Sitters Club series before Scholastic hired ghostwriters.